SD

The team is doing its best work focusing on the SD logo, which is part of former President / CEO / COO Tom Garfinkel’s legacy . It’s the only semi-consistent design element in the team’s history, and the tweaking they did in 2004 made it unique and really improved the typography.

The SD is the team’s strongest mark, and they’ve focused on using it consistently. The SD is almost always white on a blue background, both on logos and on the uniforms. The sand SD hat created needless clutter, while poor contrast made it difficult to read from more than a few feet away. Great job in that regard.

Risk, Emotion, and Being Who We Are

It bears repeating often that Bringing Back the Brown doesn’t mean simply wearing a 1975, 1984, or any other retro jersey. There’s no reason brown can’t be incorporated into the existing blue either. With some creativity, vision, and good design sense, whatever reasons the team prefers blue don’t need to be sacrificed for the sake of brown. It will take some risk and some leadership but nothing great was ever created without them.

A confident brand doesn’t try to be something isn’t, in the same way the Padres shouldn’t try to look like a stuffy team from the east coast. A strong brand is unique enough to be recognized easily, which is why the Padres need to differentiate from the many other teams that wear blue. And for heaven’s sake, a great brand isn’t somebody else’s brand. I hope to never hear the phrase “red, white, and blue uniforms” in the same sentence as “Padres” ever again.

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Yeah, I don’t get why the default reaction to “Bring Back the Brown” is that it means retro uniforms. Retro jerseys are great on retro nights. Incorporate brown modestly and it will work.

Geoff Hancock

I agree that the Bring Back the Brown movement doesn’t need to (nor should it) simply mean retro jerseys. That said, I’m not sure that message is being clearly expressed by the more vocal BBTB people.

GoldenBoy

I’m not sure if Blue & Brown would work together, although dark blue with dark brown might be able to work. Gold is a better fit with Blue, like the Chargers colors. Whatever they do, they need to make it interesting, yet not end up looking like the D-Backs or Rockies. I get the feeling that this current ownership group wants to make the Padres look like a faux-Red Sox in the future with a PCL-based redesign. But if the fans continue to voice their opinions, we might be able to Bring Back the Brown. It’d be a very smart p.r. move by the f.o.

Sac Bunt Melvin

I thought the pallette above with blue and brown works pretty well together.

GoldenBoy

Sure, but let’s not forget. It’s not Bring Back the Beige.

Brandon Cline

Blue/Orange are complementary colors. Brown is just orange that is less saturated and less of a hue. The 1991-2001? unis had the right idea for colors.

Geoff Hancock

Blue and brown were my wedding colors. They work. And look sharp as hell together.

Brandon Cline

I make use of: http://colorschemedesigner.com/ extensively when I try to make websites and what not. I’ve been using it to try to come up with some ideas for Blue/Sand/Brown mixture. Although I like that palette you have above.